Geocode to parcel

[GwenPeterson]

Does ESRI have a product that will return a parcel centroid or x,y point within a parcel when geocoding a set of mailing addresses?  My address set has a high return of matches but when I view the results they are street points.  I need the x,y coordinate to be within the boundaries of the parcel.

Gwen

[JoeBorgione]

Gwen-  you can convert your parcel polygons to a point feature class with the feature to point tool; I only have an arc editor license and can't use it so it seems you need an arc info license for it. 

The poor mans approach (which is what I have to do) would be to add two fields to your parcel attribute table of double type; CentroidX and CentroidY.  Then you can use the Calculate Geometry tool to get the centroid x,y pairs.  Use that table to Add X Y coordinates and save that to a point feature class.  Once that's all done, you have a point feature class with addresses you can match to. 

[edited moments after posting] Or you should be able to simply geocode against the parcels themselves; I'm not sure if that puts the address point at the centroid or not.  Maybe you can try that on a subset of your parcels.

Hope this helps-

[MatthewOelschlegal]

To address Joe's point, if you geocode against parcel data the point will be the center of the parcel.  Gwen do you have parcel data or were you asking if that is made available by ESRI?

Matt

[GwenPeterson]

Matt,

What do you mean geocode to parcel data?  I am using the address locator on 10.0 US Streets GeoCode Service (ArcGIS Online) to geocode a table of addresses.[ATTACH=CONFIG]16266[/ATTACH]

I've tried to attach a JPG file which illustrates the problem.   The geocode results place the x,y coordinate on the street instead on within the parcel boundary.  Can you give me any further direction on what I am doing wrong?

Thanks.

Gwen

[MatthewOelschlegal]

That answers my question.  Based on the image you attached it seems you have a parcel layer, is that correct?  If so you can create an address locator that uses the parcel layer, or create a composite address locator that uses a parcel layer and street centerline layer to geocode against. 

Edit:  Are all the addresses you need to geocode in San Diego County or just the one you happened to show?

Matt

[JennieCatalano1]

I'm having the same issue.  Not all parcels have addresses associated to it, so no use creating center points and address locator.  When I enter an address in Google maps; however, it zooms to the center of the parcel vs ESRI's geocoder - which takes you to the center of the street. 

[JoeBorgione]

Gwenn-  like Matt says and what I included in my edited post, you can create a locator that uses points, lines or polygons.  Remember all geocoding does is turn some sort of string that we as humans recognize into an x,y pair that the GIS recognizes.

So if we are matching against streets, and the 'string' happens to be an address like 1234 S Main St, the locator looks at the streets to see if there is a segment called S Main ST and if any of those segments have the range that covers 1234.  Then it interpolates where it should be based on the length of the segment and the values of the range.

Let's say you have a point feature class of schools and all it has is the name of the school. If you have a table of events that references each school by name, you can geocode that list to your point data.

In your case with parcels, it has an address field.  You can match your table of addresses against the parcels, and instead of interpolating where the point should be along the street, it hits the actual polygon.  More precise results especially when you have parcels that carry a street address but are set WAY back from the street.  Or parcels that have addresses that the street data doesn't cover.  And who DOESN'T have parcels like that? 

Take a look here for a summary of what locator styles use what type of feature class.

Hope this helps-

[GwenPeterson]

Thanks, this was the missing piece I needed.  Does anyone know of a California parcel locator that is already built?  I hate reinventing something that I'm sure dozens of people have.

[Greg_Mattis]

Gwen,

We have a composite locator that looks at our Parcels when searching by APN (and zooms to the centroid of the parcel) or looking to our Address Points when searching by Address. The address points are where we choose to place them and are within the boundaries of the parcel.